(Baekyeol) Comparisons (part 1)
Title: Comparisons
Rating: pg/pg-13 (for some swearing and mention of naughty concepts?)
Word count: 8071
Summary: Baekhyun does homework and Chanyeol is weird. Also, Jongin is a caveman and Joonmyun is married to his iPhone.
(writer's note: this is dedicated to my friend lynna, who i promised to write a baekyeol fic for. hope you like it bb~)
Byun Baekhyun does homework, and not just his. He likes to call it a business, really, although he knows he'd get in a shitload of trouble if he were busted (considering the number of people who 'use' him, though, seeing as he is a rather indispensable resource, he doesn't see himself getting caught any time soon).
The way it works: every day between 3:00 and 9:00, students can bring their homework to him, and depending on the length, difficulty, and subject, he'll charge anywhere from $5 to $100+ (no one's complained about the prices yet, so they've stuck) to do it for them. If it is a particularly hard assignment (for example, a full length 10 page essay on the relevance of DeMoivre's theorem in pre-calc), or if the customer is particularly rich (what can Baekhyun say, he likes money), he may end up charging extra.
He's had students of all ages come ask for help, from under to upperclassmen, and, surprisingly, even a teacher once asked his opinion about what should be done for a lesson the following week (Baekhyun kindly turned her down, despite the offer of $150; he didn't like the idea of news spreading to all the teachers of what he'd done and then he'd end up doing nothing but plan lessons for the whole fucking school for the rest of his years).
"I think you just like feeling like you're way smarter than everyone else," his friend Joonmyun would tell him often.
"That's because I am," Baekhyun would reply stiffly, and Joonmyun would just smile and nod and keep texting on his iPhone because that's really all he did and it made Baekhyun twitch because anyone who spends that much time on their cellphone should really just develop brain cancer and die or something.
But Baekhyun keeps running his 'business.' And there's probably something to be said here about doing too much of one thing and it coming back to nip you in the butt (or however the saying goes, Baekhyun doesn't really care), but he's far too occupied with that DeMoivre essay and the other few assignments he needs to finish before the end of the week, so he's not really in any place to think about morals like that.
Or, well, he didn't use to think about things like morals (was it morals? Baekhyun’s can’t remember). But sometimes people change unexpectedly, especially with the addition of a catalyst to their life's chemical equation. And a catalyst was exactly what Park Chanyeol was.
If Baekhyun were photosynthesis, Chanyeol would be chlorophyll. Or maybe it's the other way around, Baekhyun isn't too sure. All he does know is that somehow, he and Chanyeol seem to need each other to function properly, similar to how certain animals live in symbiosis with their environment, or how you can't have a linear function without a slope (even if it's zero), or maybe it's like how a complete sentence can't exist without a subject and verb, and he's the subject and Chanyeol's the verb. It's really all very confusing and reaches new territories that Baekhyun hasn't even thought about, so he could be wrong, but if it's Park Chanyeol, he's not sure he'll ever be right, so what does it matter.
He does know one other thing, though: that there's something about Chanyeol. Something in the way he simply opened the door to Baekhyun's routine life and threw a party, completely disrupting all of Baekhyun's foundations and setting up his own like he owned the goddamn place. Something in the way that he smiles and laughs like he has no cares in the world and probably would spend the apocalypse talking about the shape of Baekhyun's nose or the number of times one can say a word before it starts to not sound like a word. Well, and he makes Baekhyun feel like a crocodile or an elephant or a dolphin or a seahorse or some other terribly romantic animal during mating season, and Baekhyun honestly has no idea why.
Park Chanyeol is like a foreign country. He is a place where Baekhyun can unabashedly declare, "The limit does not exist," and mean it with so much gusto that it hurts. Chanyeol is a word with no definition, a feeling that can't be described, and all of the weirdest, corniest pickup lines he could ever come up.
Chanyeol is Chanyeol, and Baekhyun thinks he might be in love with him.
✿
The day that Chanyeol enters Baekhyun's photorealist self-portrait of his life is what otherwise would be considered a normal day for him. Baekhyun goes through his classes bored and dead-tired from staying up all night to finish that goddamn essay (DeMoivre is fine, it's the page requirement that really fucked with him because, seriously, who the fuck has the time to come up with 10 pages talking about something so pointless and insignificant, and sometimes Baekhyun hates being intelligent because it's he who has to take that time out of his uneventful schedule).
He's spent half his evening hours with Joonmyun, listening to the tapping of the older boy's fingers on his iPhone screen as he incessantly texts, and it's really just way too distracting, to the point that Baekhyun kind of wants to take the device out of his friend's hands and drop it out of the 4th story window of the classroom they're working in just to see the horrified look on Joonmyun's face. But, alas, he's a good friend, so he sits and silently endures the torture of Joonmyun's addiction as he, himself, tries to prove that the quantity of tanx + coty divided by tanxcotx is equal to tany + cotx.
This would all be so much easier if Joonmyun wasn't perpetually married to that stupid little electronic computer.
Baekhyun has just started the first step to the problem when a light knock sounds at the door, and he's forced to look up from his fifth failed attempt at solving it to see a boy standing in the doorway to the classroom. An abnormally, freakishly tall boy with wild, frizzy hair and a huge grin plastered on his face and Baekhyun's wondering if he stepped out of a kid's cartoon show because, in all honesty, he doesn't even look real.
"Um, hey, you're Byun Baekhyun, right?" The voice accompanying that baby face is uncharacteristically deep, and it takes Baekhyun a long moment of processing this strange apparition before he can at all think to respond.
"Y-yes, that's me," he says with what he hopes is a cordial smile, but it falters before the words are out of his mouth because his voice seems oddly strangled to his ears.
Joonmyun looks up from his iPhone and notices the tall boy. He lets out a surprised grunt and jumps up from his chair as he exclaims, "Heeyyy, Park Chanyeol, haven't seen you since that party at Sehun's, man, how's it going??" The two do some sort of handshake while Baekhyun stares, slightly flabbergasted, at them.
"Ah, yeah, it's pretty good," says that deep voice, and Baekhyun's wondering how it's possible for one person to have such a pleasant face and pleasant voice and still exist properly in the world.
"That's good, that's good," Joonmyun nods approvingly, smiling, "So what are you up to?"
"Uh, just here to look for some help with a bit of homework," the demi-god giant says- except, well, Baekhyun's going to pretend he did not just call this complete stranger that.
"Homework help?" Joonmyun repeats, cocking an eyebrow. "But Yeol, aren't you-?" he doesn't have time to finish because the tall boy is hastily throwing a hand up over Joonmyun's mouth, laughing loudly and smiling at Baekhyun. That smile reminds Baekhyun of a chimpanzee or something, but somehow it's really cute and melts his heart a little, enough to not question what Joonmyun had been saying or why the boy had stopped him.
"Um, so I'm Park Chanyeol, by the way," the tall boy says, peeling his hand away from Joonmyun's mouth to look at it for a moment before thrusting out his other hand toward Baekhyun, who starts at the sudden gesture.
"Nice to meet you?" Baekhyun says uncertainly, shaking hands with him.
"Yeah," Chanyeol says, beaming. "So, uh, I have $20 and a take-home pre-calc quiz. Would that be enough or...?" He's looking at Baekhyun with wide, eager eyes, kind of like the way a puppy begs for treats, and even though Baekhyun usually charges at least $30 for a quiz, he can't bring himself to say no to that face.
"Yes, that would be fine," Baekhyun manages to say, and Chanyeol squeaks delightedly (squeaks! what is he, a rodent??) and offers out a sheet of paper Baekhyun hadn't noticed him holding.
"Here," he says after Baekhyun has taken the quiz from him, fishing around in his pocket before pulling out a crumpled $20 bill.
"Oh, no, I don't usually take payment before I finish," Baekhyun shakes his head as Chanyeol tries to hand him the money. The tall boy gives him a confused look. "I mean," he continues, slightly flustered, "It all depends on if I can finish the whole thing or if it takes longer than expected, so sometimes I alter the amount originally charged."
"Oh," Chanyeol says, still clutching the $20 in his hand, "Ok."
"So when is this due?" Baekhyun asks, swallowing. He's a bit annoyed with himself for the way he's acting because normally people don't affect him like this. If he's being honest, he doesn't like people, especially the ones who use his business because they're just too fucking lazy to actually learn the material.
But this Chanyeol is different. He has an air of innocence around him. Baekhyun can't pinpoint it; maybe it's the hair? Those weird wide eyes? The way he sort of towers over Baekhyun, smiling like the freaking big friendly giant? Any way he looks at it, Baekhyun is bothered.
"Tomorrow when I have class at 1:30," Chanyeol answers. "So do I pick it up when you're done or something?"
"Um, actually, it probably won't take me that long," Baekhyun says, glancing over the quiz. "If you want to just wait about 20 minutes or so and come back, that should be enough time."
"Really? It'll be that quick?" Chanyeol blurts, awed, and Baekhyun can feel himself blushing. "But weren't you were working on something else?"
"Um," Baekhyun mutters, remembering the packet he was working on before a certain someone of abnormal height appeared. "It isn't due until the end of the week, so I can work on your quiz for now." Chanyeol's eyes light up.
"Great! Then is it OK if I just wait here until you're done?" he asks, and Baekhyun can't help gawking as the tall boy pulls out the chair next to the one Joonmyun (who had resumed texting, go figure) had been sitting in and plops down in it.
"Um, s-suit yourself," Baekhyun mumbles, sitting down with the quiz and turning his back to the pair of them.
"So, Yeol, you're in pre-calc, huh?" Joonmyun says, "And how's that? I hear it's a hard class."
"It-" Chanyeol stops for a second, and Baekhyun glances back at him as he smiles and goes on, "-is, yeah. I was surprised." Baekhyun catches Joonmyun's amused grin before he forces himself to focus on the quiz on the desk in front of him and not on that head of hair that looks like someone's microwaved cat (and he means that in the most endearing way possible).
A few times while he's working, Baekhyun steals more glances at Chanyeol, only to meet his eyes, blush, and look back at the quiz. Chanyeol just smiles at him, bobbing his head to some tune only he can hear while tapping it out on his desk in a manner that should be even more distracting than Joonmyun's texting, except that Baekhyun can't bring himself to be mad at the boy.
Byun Baekhyun has never let anyone get under his skin, no matter how attractive or intelligent or stupid or annoying they are, or how much they try to bother him. He doesn't like people. People use him for his smarts and he uses people for their money and it's as simple as that, or, at least, it ought to be because that's all he's used to and he's not sure he's ready to let Park Chanyeol suddenly disturb everything he's tried so hard to preserve.
But that crazy hair, those big eyes, long legs, and that goddamn smile.
Maybe there's an equation somewhere to help explain the way that Baekhyun is so easily dropping the walls that had taken him years to set up, and for someone he's only just met, no less. Maybe somewhere there's a word he hasn't thought of to describe this bizarre sensation, whatever it is that attracts him to this strange boy.
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
Well, all Baekhyun can discern at this point is that he has never finished a pre-calc quiz so quickly and been so unsure of his answers. Chanyeol still pays him the $20.
✿
"Park Chanyeol? Yeah, he's in my pre-calc class. We kind of hang out?" Jongin tells Baekhyun over lunch. Jongin's kind of like Joonmyun in that he mostly annoys Baekhyun and Baekhyun's not sure why they're friends because he's intelligent and Jongin is, well, not, but right now that doesn't matter because all Baekhyun wants to know is a little more about Park Chanyeol. "He's," Jongin continues, gesturing with his hands, "um, I'd say he's kind of dumb, but I don't really know. He's crazy weird, to be honest."
"Weird how?" Baekhyun asks interestedly.
"I don't know, man," Jongin sighs, giving him a look. "He's always off in his own world, doing his own thing. He likes to ask a lot of questions that don't make sense. But you can't really dislike him, you know? He's kind of like that one little puppy at the petstore with an eye mutation, so you feel bad for it and it's kind of cute so you end up taking it home with you."
Baekhyun considers this comparison and adds it to the ones he'd already come up with.
"... Wait, Kim Jongin, you just used a simile? And about me?? This is great, I'm flattered!" says a deep voice, and Baekhyun's heart flutters as a familiar head of unkempt hair joins their lunch table.
"Dude, I just called you a mutated puppy," Jongin says, and Baekhyun tries not to snort, which results in him making a sound like a feral cat's battle cry, and he blushes fiercely when Park Chanyeol turns those wide eyes upon him.
"Ah, you're the homework guy!" he says with a grin. "Byun Baekhyun!" Baekhyun squirms in his seat. Why does hearing this boy say his name make him feel so strange? "Were you guys talking about me?" that wide smile asks.
"Yeah, Baekhyun was-" Jongin starts to say, but he's lost to a grunt as the older boy nudges him very painfully in the ribcage with a pointy elbow.
"Um, we were talking about the pre-calc class," Baekhyun supplies with an awkward smile.
"Cool. Pre-calc is interesting," Chanyeol nods. "I don't really get most of it, but it's interesting."
"What are you talking about?" Jongin says, brow furrowed, "You have like the best-" he nearly tumbles out of his seat as Chanyeol pushes him.
"Um, yeah," Chanyeol laughs, still smiling,"Thanks for the help on the quiz. You saved my ass."
"No problem," Baekhyun manages a small, strained laugh of his own. "It's what I do," he adds, and it actually feels pretty pathetic to admit that he makes a living by doing other people's homework, but Chanyeol doesn't seem to care.
"You guys are violent," Jongin mutters, recovering from Chanyeol's assault. The two ignore him.
"So can I come see you after classes again?" Chanyeol asks as Baekhyun sips from a water bottle, and he chokes on the liquid, coughing and sputtering, blush creeping onto his cheeks.
"Are you Ok?" Chanyeol pats his back with a large hand, which makes him blush more, and he can see Jongin smirking which makes him blush even more, and he's only now realizing Chanyeol only meant he had more homework for Baekhyun to do. Smooth, Baek. Real smooth.
"It's just tonight's assignment," Chanyeol says once Baekhyun has regained his composure. "A few problems from the book." Jongin yelps suddenly and Baekhyun gves him an alarmed look.
"Stomped. On my foot," Jongin says, tears in his eyes, and Baekhyun looks at Chanyeol, who is still smiling innocently.
"So how much will that be?" the tall boy asks.
"Um, maybe $5-10?" Baekhyun offers. He's leaning more towards $5 because Chanyeol is cute- and he totally did not just admit that to himself. Chanyeol is a wild peacock and Baekhyun is a small beetle, terrified for his life. Except he also totally did not just equate Chanyeol to an animal with cock in its name. Oh god.
Shutting off his brain for a moment, Baekhyun forces a smile. “Yeah, um, $5 would be perfect.”
“Great!” Chanyeol says happily.
✿
“I thought you normally charge more,” Jongin says as the two make their way to chemistry class after lunch. “You know. I mean, Yeol is pretty loaded, I thought you’d at least try to squeeze $20-30 out of him.” Baekhyun cringes and blushes at the boy’s use of ‘squeeze.’
“Well, maybe I’m just feeling particularly generous right now,” he says, folding his arms and hoisting his messenger bag further up his shoulder. “But maybe generous isn’t a word that fits in Kim Jongin’s personal vernacular.”
“What did you just say?” Jongin asks with a blank stare, and Baekhyun rolls his eyes. “Vernacular?”
“It means native language,” Baekhyun sighs. “I swear, sometimes you’re like a caveman.”
“Well at least I wasn’t drooling all over Park Chanyeol,” Jongin snickers as Baekhyun proceeds to drop his bag.
“I was not drooling!” Baekhyun exclaims, a little loudly, and he blushes brightly as a few people in the hallway look over at them. “And what does that have to do with cavemen??”
“Are you sure?” Jongin asks, ignoring the second comment and grinning as Baekhyun glares at him. “I don’t know, man, you were totally all over him.”
“Jesus christ, Jongin, you really must be a caveman!” Baekhyun groans, picking up his bag and increasing his pace. “Why do I even hang out with you? Your intelligence isn’t even one one thousandth of mine.”
“Isn’t that redundant?” Jongin asks. “One one thousandth?” He thinks for a minute. “Or is that proper?” Baekhyun facepalms. “Anyway, Park Chanyeol.”
“What about him?” Baekhyun says through gritted teeth.
“Well, you know, he’s pretty cool,” Jongin says casually. “He’s totally single too, and totally your type.” He whimpers when Baekhyun steps ungracefully on his foot. “Watch it! Eggs already broke that foot!”
“Eggs?” Baekhyun repeats, giving him a look.
“Oh, right, that’s Yeol’s nickname. Because Yeol sounds like yolk, which is a part of an egg,” Jongin explains. “I came up with it. Kind of like that one time I tried to get everyone to call you Bacon-” He can’t finish because Baekhyun is nudging him once again in the ribcage.
“Enough! I’m losing brain cells just listening to you speak!” Baekhyun shakes his head, exhaling loudly in frustration.
“I’m going to complain to Joonmyun! You’re abusive,” Jongin pouts, holding his arms protectively in front of his ribs.
“What’s he going to do?” Baekhyun says, “Use his iPhone to bludgeon me to death?”
“What’s bludgeon mean?”
“It means don’t sit next to me in chem.”
✿
Jongin does sit next to Baekhyun, and despite Baekhyun’s exceedingly murderous feelings toward his ‘friend,’ he manages to get through the class without hurting anyone. Maybe it’s because he’s thinking about the two hours, 34 minutes and 27 seconds until the end of the day when he can take the 84 steps up to the 4th floor of the building and see Park Chanyeol again.
Make that two hours, 34 minutes, and 10 seconds.
Two hours and 34 minutes.
Baekhyun really should not be counting.
Two hours, 33 minutes, and 50 seconds.
Oh god, he really should not be this excited.
His calculus class, as well as his English course, pass by in a flash, and before he knows it, he’s taking the stairs two at a time to get up to his usual place of business. Joonmyun is already there when he arrives, texting away on that stupid iPhone.
“You’re earlier than usual,” comments the older boy, not looking up from the device. “And Jongin tells me I’m supposed to ‘bludgeon you to death’ with my baby.” Baekhyun snorts even though he’s out of breath.
"Tell me he looked up the word bludgeon before he told you that?"
"He pronounced it wrong, but I think he knew what he was saying," Joonmyun says, and Baekhyun laughs.
"Fantastic. Maybe if I start using complicated words whenever I talk to him, I can help broaden his vocabulary!" he says, throwing his bag down by his usual chair and plopping down to catch his breath.
"Jongin's vocabulary is just fine," Joonmyun says, "Yours is just a little too broad."
"Whatever," Baekhyun sighs, fanning himself with one hand, "Let me know when he uses one sentence that doesn't make him sound like a caveman."
"He also told me to tell you to stop calling him a caveman," Joonmyun says, frowning. "Besides, he's much too attractive to be a caveman."
"Who's a caveman?" asks a deep voice, and Baekhyun's beginning to think Chanyeol just teleports everywhere he goes because he habitually shows up out of nowhere.
"Kim Jongin," Baekhyun says, ignoring the sudden self-conscious feeling that nags at the back of his mind for being sweaty and out of breath in front of Park Chanyeol.
"He is not," Joonmyun says, frustrated, looking up from his phone. Chanyeol catches on.
"Ah, come to think of it, his skin tone is sorta on the dark side," the tall boy muses, leaning against the doorway to the classroom. "Maybe he's the last of his kind."
"It's hard to understand how he survived, though, considering the miniscule size of his brain," Baekhyun continues, and he and Chanyeol both smirk as Joonmyun glowers at them.
"You two are cruel," he says.
"Sometimes the truth hurts," Chanyeol says, frowning in feigned sadness. "Although, speaking of harsh truths, Joonmyun, man, I've got one for you," he enters the room and walks up to the older boy before finishing in a dramatic whisper, "You can't get married to an iPhone."
The look on Joonmyun's face is priceless.
"I'm going to pretend I don't know either of you and just leave while I'm still sane," Joonmyun says.
"I don't know if you've ever been sane," Baekhyun says, and Joonmyun gives him one last affronted look.
“Fine then, let me rephrase that; I’m going to leave while you two are still alive,” the older boy says, ignoring the laughter from the two of them before hurrying out of the room
About three seconds later, Baekhyun abruptly stops laughing and comes to the startling realization that he is now alone in the classroom with Park Chanyeol.
Suddenly his throat feels dry and his chest feels tight and he wonders if he's going into cardiac rest from running too fast to get up the stairs, but Chanyeol is approaching him and no, that stupid giant is definitely the reason Baekhyun feels like he's dying.
"You're pretty funny, homework guy," Chanyeol says with one of his signature toothy smiles.
"My name's-"
"Byun Baekhyun, I know," Chanyeol interrupts Baekhyun's protest, smiling wider and causing the shorter boy's face to blush scarlet. Maybe having Chanyeol call him 'homework guy' would be more efficient because hearing his name in that sexy deep voice really does not make it easy to think and form coherent thoughts.
... Did Baekhyun really just use 'sexy' to describe Chanyeol's voice? Oh god.
"So here's the assignment," Chanyeol says, handing a notebook and textbook to a very flustered Baekhyun. “I wrote it down in the notebook."
"O-Ok," Baekhyun musters a smile, glad for an excuse to turn his flaming cheeks away from the tall boy.
He's about to start working when he hears the sound of Chanyeol clearing his throat and is forced to turn back around once again.
"Is it OK if I wait here until you're done?" the tall boy asks, eyes shining, and Baekhyun's running through all his comparisons in his head and stopping at the one Jongin had made about Chanyeol being the mutated puppy at a petstore. He's more like the relatively normal, seriously adorable puppy with way too much energy that all of the customers would fight over because everyone wants to take him home. Including Baekhyun.
"I don't mind," he replies in a quiet voice, swallowing hard as Chanyeol beams and happily situates himself in one of the desks adjacent to his own.
"I won't distract you, I promise!" Chanyeol assures him, and Baekhyun doesn't have the heart to tell him that he's really already way too distracting even when he's not doing anything at all.
Maybe Chanyeol is more like an imaginary number, or a one-sided limit, or he could even be that DeMoivre essay Baekhyun wrote two nights ago-
"Is there anywhere in math where you can have an opinion?" Chanyeol asks suddenly. Baekhyun presses his pencil too hard against the paper and the lead snaps, and he's glancing back at Chanyeol to give him a questioning look.
"C-come again?"
"You know," Chanyeol shrugs, "Because in math, answers are always one thing, and you don't really get the chance to say 'I think the answer is this' or I don't know, I guess sometimes answers can vary, but-" Baekhyun is stifling a laugh, blushing when Chanyeol cocks his head to one side like a curious puppy (he really must be one, Baekhyun concludes). "What?" the tall boy asks cutely.
"Nothing, it's just," Baekhyun pauses, fighting a smile, "I don't think I've heard anyone say anything like that. It's an interesting point, and I wish I could say there was some math problem in the world in which you had freedom of opinion." Chanyeol pouts.
"So there isn't?"
"Well, there might be, but I don't know it," Baekhyun says, amused.
"Wow, you really are smart," Chanyeol says, smiling himself while Baekhyun blushes again.
"Wh-why do you say that?" the shorter boy asks, facing the assignment he should be working on. Stupid Park Chanyeol with his stupid distracting face and stupid distracting voice and stupid distracting comments.
"I don't know, like, the way you talk, that sort of thing. You just have a very intelligent feeling about you," Chanyeol explains eagerly. "I like it."
For some reason, Baekhyun almost snaps and says, "I like you," which would be completely ridiculous since he only met Chanyeol yesterday, and this just goes against all of the principles and laws of being Byun Baekhyun and hating the human population as a whole- but it's Park Chanyeol, so maybe Baekhyun doesn't have a choice.
"Thanks," he settles for saying before he returns to working on the math problems. Although, his face stays a rather warm shade of red.
He only manages to get through half of the assignment because Chanyeol keeps talking to him. He doesn't mind. Chanyeol still insists on paying him the $5.
part 2
Rating: pg/pg-13 (for some swearing and mention of naughty concepts?)
Word count: 8071
Summary: Baekhyun does homework and Chanyeol is weird. Also, Jongin is a caveman and Joonmyun is married to his iPhone.
(writer's note: this is dedicated to my friend lynna, who i promised to write a baekyeol fic for. hope you like it bb~)
Byun Baekhyun does homework, and not just his. He likes to call it a business, really, although he knows he'd get in a shitload of trouble if he were busted (considering the number of people who 'use' him, though, seeing as he is a rather indispensable resource, he doesn't see himself getting caught any time soon).
The way it works: every day between 3:00 and 9:00, students can bring their homework to him, and depending on the length, difficulty, and subject, he'll charge anywhere from $5 to $100+ (no one's complained about the prices yet, so they've stuck) to do it for them. If it is a particularly hard assignment (for example, a full length 10 page essay on the relevance of DeMoivre's theorem in pre-calc), or if the customer is particularly rich (what can Baekhyun say, he likes money), he may end up charging extra.
He's had students of all ages come ask for help, from under to upperclassmen, and, surprisingly, even a teacher once asked his opinion about what should be done for a lesson the following week (Baekhyun kindly turned her down, despite the offer of $150; he didn't like the idea of news spreading to all the teachers of what he'd done and then he'd end up doing nothing but plan lessons for the whole fucking school for the rest of his years).
"I think you just like feeling like you're way smarter than everyone else," his friend Joonmyun would tell him often.
"That's because I am," Baekhyun would reply stiffly, and Joonmyun would just smile and nod and keep texting on his iPhone because that's really all he did and it made Baekhyun twitch because anyone who spends that much time on their cellphone should really just develop brain cancer and die or something.
But Baekhyun keeps running his 'business.' And there's probably something to be said here about doing too much of one thing and it coming back to nip you in the butt (or however the saying goes, Baekhyun doesn't really care), but he's far too occupied with that DeMoivre essay and the other few assignments he needs to finish before the end of the week, so he's not really in any place to think about morals like that.
Or, well, he didn't use to think about things like morals (was it morals? Baekhyun’s can’t remember). But sometimes people change unexpectedly, especially with the addition of a catalyst to their life's chemical equation. And a catalyst was exactly what Park Chanyeol was.
If Baekhyun were photosynthesis, Chanyeol would be chlorophyll. Or maybe it's the other way around, Baekhyun isn't too sure. All he does know is that somehow, he and Chanyeol seem to need each other to function properly, similar to how certain animals live in symbiosis with their environment, or how you can't have a linear function without a slope (even if it's zero), or maybe it's like how a complete sentence can't exist without a subject and verb, and he's the subject and Chanyeol's the verb. It's really all very confusing and reaches new territories that Baekhyun hasn't even thought about, so he could be wrong, but if it's Park Chanyeol, he's not sure he'll ever be right, so what does it matter.
He does know one other thing, though: that there's something about Chanyeol. Something in the way he simply opened the door to Baekhyun's routine life and threw a party, completely disrupting all of Baekhyun's foundations and setting up his own like he owned the goddamn place. Something in the way that he smiles and laughs like he has no cares in the world and probably would spend the apocalypse talking about the shape of Baekhyun's nose or the number of times one can say a word before it starts to not sound like a word. Well, and he makes Baekhyun feel like a crocodile or an elephant or a dolphin or a seahorse or some other terribly romantic animal during mating season, and Baekhyun honestly has no idea why.
Park Chanyeol is like a foreign country. He is a place where Baekhyun can unabashedly declare, "The limit does not exist," and mean it with so much gusto that it hurts. Chanyeol is a word with no definition, a feeling that can't be described, and all of the weirdest, corniest pickup lines he could ever come up.
Chanyeol is Chanyeol, and Baekhyun thinks he might be in love with him.
✿
The day that Chanyeol enters Baekhyun's photorealist self-portrait of his life is what otherwise would be considered a normal day for him. Baekhyun goes through his classes bored and dead-tired from staying up all night to finish that goddamn essay (DeMoivre is fine, it's the page requirement that really fucked with him because, seriously, who the fuck has the time to come up with 10 pages talking about something so pointless and insignificant, and sometimes Baekhyun hates being intelligent because it's he who has to take that time out of his uneventful schedule).
He's spent half his evening hours with Joonmyun, listening to the tapping of the older boy's fingers on his iPhone screen as he incessantly texts, and it's really just way too distracting, to the point that Baekhyun kind of wants to take the device out of his friend's hands and drop it out of the 4th story window of the classroom they're working in just to see the horrified look on Joonmyun's face. But, alas, he's a good friend, so he sits and silently endures the torture of Joonmyun's addiction as he, himself, tries to prove that the quantity of tanx + coty divided by tanxcotx is equal to tany + cotx.
This would all be so much easier if Joonmyun wasn't perpetually married to that stupid little electronic computer.
Baekhyun has just started the first step to the problem when a light knock sounds at the door, and he's forced to look up from his fifth failed attempt at solving it to see a boy standing in the doorway to the classroom. An abnormally, freakishly tall boy with wild, frizzy hair and a huge grin plastered on his face and Baekhyun's wondering if he stepped out of a kid's cartoon show because, in all honesty, he doesn't even look real.
"Um, hey, you're Byun Baekhyun, right?" The voice accompanying that baby face is uncharacteristically deep, and it takes Baekhyun a long moment of processing this strange apparition before he can at all think to respond.
"Y-yes, that's me," he says with what he hopes is a cordial smile, but it falters before the words are out of his mouth because his voice seems oddly strangled to his ears.
Joonmyun looks up from his iPhone and notices the tall boy. He lets out a surprised grunt and jumps up from his chair as he exclaims, "Heeyyy, Park Chanyeol, haven't seen you since that party at Sehun's, man, how's it going??" The two do some sort of handshake while Baekhyun stares, slightly flabbergasted, at them.
"Ah, yeah, it's pretty good," says that deep voice, and Baekhyun's wondering how it's possible for one person to have such a pleasant face and pleasant voice and still exist properly in the world.
"That's good, that's good," Joonmyun nods approvingly, smiling, "So what are you up to?"
"Uh, just here to look for some help with a bit of homework," the demi-god giant says- except, well, Baekhyun's going to pretend he did not just call this complete stranger that.
"Homework help?" Joonmyun repeats, cocking an eyebrow. "But Yeol, aren't you-?" he doesn't have time to finish because the tall boy is hastily throwing a hand up over Joonmyun's mouth, laughing loudly and smiling at Baekhyun. That smile reminds Baekhyun of a chimpanzee or something, but somehow it's really cute and melts his heart a little, enough to not question what Joonmyun had been saying or why the boy had stopped him.
"Um, so I'm Park Chanyeol, by the way," the tall boy says, peeling his hand away from Joonmyun's mouth to look at it for a moment before thrusting out his other hand toward Baekhyun, who starts at the sudden gesture.
"Nice to meet you?" Baekhyun says uncertainly, shaking hands with him.
"Yeah," Chanyeol says, beaming. "So, uh, I have $20 and a take-home pre-calc quiz. Would that be enough or...?" He's looking at Baekhyun with wide, eager eyes, kind of like the way a puppy begs for treats, and even though Baekhyun usually charges at least $30 for a quiz, he can't bring himself to say no to that face.
"Yes, that would be fine," Baekhyun manages to say, and Chanyeol squeaks delightedly (squeaks! what is he, a rodent??) and offers out a sheet of paper Baekhyun hadn't noticed him holding.
"Here," he says after Baekhyun has taken the quiz from him, fishing around in his pocket before pulling out a crumpled $20 bill.
"Oh, no, I don't usually take payment before I finish," Baekhyun shakes his head as Chanyeol tries to hand him the money. The tall boy gives him a confused look. "I mean," he continues, slightly flustered, "It all depends on if I can finish the whole thing or if it takes longer than expected, so sometimes I alter the amount originally charged."
"Oh," Chanyeol says, still clutching the $20 in his hand, "Ok."
"So when is this due?" Baekhyun asks, swallowing. He's a bit annoyed with himself for the way he's acting because normally people don't affect him like this. If he's being honest, he doesn't like people, especially the ones who use his business because they're just too fucking lazy to actually learn the material.
But this Chanyeol is different. He has an air of innocence around him. Baekhyun can't pinpoint it; maybe it's the hair? Those weird wide eyes? The way he sort of towers over Baekhyun, smiling like the freaking big friendly giant? Any way he looks at it, Baekhyun is bothered.
"Tomorrow when I have class at 1:30," Chanyeol answers. "So do I pick it up when you're done or something?"
"Um, actually, it probably won't take me that long," Baekhyun says, glancing over the quiz. "If you want to just wait about 20 minutes or so and come back, that should be enough time."
"Really? It'll be that quick?" Chanyeol blurts, awed, and Baekhyun can feel himself blushing. "But weren't you were working on something else?"
"Um," Baekhyun mutters, remembering the packet he was working on before a certain someone of abnormal height appeared. "It isn't due until the end of the week, so I can work on your quiz for now." Chanyeol's eyes light up.
"Great! Then is it OK if I just wait here until you're done?" he asks, and Baekhyun can't help gawking as the tall boy pulls out the chair next to the one Joonmyun (who had resumed texting, go figure) had been sitting in and plops down in it.
"Um, s-suit yourself," Baekhyun mumbles, sitting down with the quiz and turning his back to the pair of them.
"So, Yeol, you're in pre-calc, huh?" Joonmyun says, "And how's that? I hear it's a hard class."
"It-" Chanyeol stops for a second, and Baekhyun glances back at him as he smiles and goes on, "-is, yeah. I was surprised." Baekhyun catches Joonmyun's amused grin before he forces himself to focus on the quiz on the desk in front of him and not on that head of hair that looks like someone's microwaved cat (and he means that in the most endearing way possible).
A few times while he's working, Baekhyun steals more glances at Chanyeol, only to meet his eyes, blush, and look back at the quiz. Chanyeol just smiles at him, bobbing his head to some tune only he can hear while tapping it out on his desk in a manner that should be even more distracting than Joonmyun's texting, except that Baekhyun can't bring himself to be mad at the boy.
Byun Baekhyun has never let anyone get under his skin, no matter how attractive or intelligent or stupid or annoying they are, or how much they try to bother him. He doesn't like people. People use him for his smarts and he uses people for their money and it's as simple as that, or, at least, it ought to be because that's all he's used to and he's not sure he's ready to let Park Chanyeol suddenly disturb everything he's tried so hard to preserve.
But that crazy hair, those big eyes, long legs, and that goddamn smile.
Maybe there's an equation somewhere to help explain the way that Baekhyun is so easily dropping the walls that had taken him years to set up, and for someone he's only just met, no less. Maybe somewhere there's a word he hasn't thought of to describe this bizarre sensation, whatever it is that attracts him to this strange boy.
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
Well, all Baekhyun can discern at this point is that he has never finished a pre-calc quiz so quickly and been so unsure of his answers. Chanyeol still pays him the $20.
✿
"Park Chanyeol? Yeah, he's in my pre-calc class. We kind of hang out?" Jongin tells Baekhyun over lunch. Jongin's kind of like Joonmyun in that he mostly annoys Baekhyun and Baekhyun's not sure why they're friends because he's intelligent and Jongin is, well, not, but right now that doesn't matter because all Baekhyun wants to know is a little more about Park Chanyeol. "He's," Jongin continues, gesturing with his hands, "um, I'd say he's kind of dumb, but I don't really know. He's crazy weird, to be honest."
"Weird how?" Baekhyun asks interestedly.
"I don't know, man," Jongin sighs, giving him a look. "He's always off in his own world, doing his own thing. He likes to ask a lot of questions that don't make sense. But you can't really dislike him, you know? He's kind of like that one little puppy at the petstore with an eye mutation, so you feel bad for it and it's kind of cute so you end up taking it home with you."
Baekhyun considers this comparison and adds it to the ones he'd already come up with.
"... Wait, Kim Jongin, you just used a simile? And about me?? This is great, I'm flattered!" says a deep voice, and Baekhyun's heart flutters as a familiar head of unkempt hair joins their lunch table.
"Dude, I just called you a mutated puppy," Jongin says, and Baekhyun tries not to snort, which results in him making a sound like a feral cat's battle cry, and he blushes fiercely when Park Chanyeol turns those wide eyes upon him.
"Ah, you're the homework guy!" he says with a grin. "Byun Baekhyun!" Baekhyun squirms in his seat. Why does hearing this boy say his name make him feel so strange? "Were you guys talking about me?" that wide smile asks.
"Yeah, Baekhyun was-" Jongin starts to say, but he's lost to a grunt as the older boy nudges him very painfully in the ribcage with a pointy elbow.
"Um, we were talking about the pre-calc class," Baekhyun supplies with an awkward smile.
"Cool. Pre-calc is interesting," Chanyeol nods. "I don't really get most of it, but it's interesting."
"What are you talking about?" Jongin says, brow furrowed, "You have like the best-" he nearly tumbles out of his seat as Chanyeol pushes him.
"Um, yeah," Chanyeol laughs, still smiling,"Thanks for the help on the quiz. You saved my ass."
"No problem," Baekhyun manages a small, strained laugh of his own. "It's what I do," he adds, and it actually feels pretty pathetic to admit that he makes a living by doing other people's homework, but Chanyeol doesn't seem to care.
"You guys are violent," Jongin mutters, recovering from Chanyeol's assault. The two ignore him.
"So can I come see you after classes again?" Chanyeol asks as Baekhyun sips from a water bottle, and he chokes on the liquid, coughing and sputtering, blush creeping onto his cheeks.
"Are you Ok?" Chanyeol pats his back with a large hand, which makes him blush more, and he can see Jongin smirking which makes him blush even more, and he's only now realizing Chanyeol only meant he had more homework for Baekhyun to do. Smooth, Baek. Real smooth.
"It's just tonight's assignment," Chanyeol says once Baekhyun has regained his composure. "A few problems from the book." Jongin yelps suddenly and Baekhyun gves him an alarmed look.
"Stomped. On my foot," Jongin says, tears in his eyes, and Baekhyun looks at Chanyeol, who is still smiling innocently.
"So how much will that be?" the tall boy asks.
"Um, maybe $5-10?" Baekhyun offers. He's leaning more towards $5 because Chanyeol is cute- and he totally did not just admit that to himself. Chanyeol is a wild peacock and Baekhyun is a small beetle, terrified for his life. Except he also totally did not just equate Chanyeol to an animal with cock in its name. Oh god.
Shutting off his brain for a moment, Baekhyun forces a smile. “Yeah, um, $5 would be perfect.”
“Great!” Chanyeol says happily.
✿
“I thought you normally charge more,” Jongin says as the two make their way to chemistry class after lunch. “You know. I mean, Yeol is pretty loaded, I thought you’d at least try to squeeze $20-30 out of him.” Baekhyun cringes and blushes at the boy’s use of ‘squeeze.’
“Well, maybe I’m just feeling particularly generous right now,” he says, folding his arms and hoisting his messenger bag further up his shoulder. “But maybe generous isn’t a word that fits in Kim Jongin’s personal vernacular.”
“What did you just say?” Jongin asks with a blank stare, and Baekhyun rolls his eyes. “Vernacular?”
“It means native language,” Baekhyun sighs. “I swear, sometimes you’re like a caveman.”
“Well at least I wasn’t drooling all over Park Chanyeol,” Jongin snickers as Baekhyun proceeds to drop his bag.
“I was not drooling!” Baekhyun exclaims, a little loudly, and he blushes brightly as a few people in the hallway look over at them. “And what does that have to do with cavemen??”
“Are you sure?” Jongin asks, ignoring the second comment and grinning as Baekhyun glares at him. “I don’t know, man, you were totally all over him.”
“Jesus christ, Jongin, you really must be a caveman!” Baekhyun groans, picking up his bag and increasing his pace. “Why do I even hang out with you? Your intelligence isn’t even one one thousandth of mine.”
“Isn’t that redundant?” Jongin asks. “One one thousandth?” He thinks for a minute. “Or is that proper?” Baekhyun facepalms. “Anyway, Park Chanyeol.”
“What about him?” Baekhyun says through gritted teeth.
“Well, you know, he’s pretty cool,” Jongin says casually. “He’s totally single too, and totally your type.” He whimpers when Baekhyun steps ungracefully on his foot. “Watch it! Eggs already broke that foot!”
“Eggs?” Baekhyun repeats, giving him a look.
“Oh, right, that’s Yeol’s nickname. Because Yeol sounds like yolk, which is a part of an egg,” Jongin explains. “I came up with it. Kind of like that one time I tried to get everyone to call you Bacon-” He can’t finish because Baekhyun is nudging him once again in the ribcage.
“Enough! I’m losing brain cells just listening to you speak!” Baekhyun shakes his head, exhaling loudly in frustration.
“I’m going to complain to Joonmyun! You’re abusive,” Jongin pouts, holding his arms protectively in front of his ribs.
“What’s he going to do?” Baekhyun says, “Use his iPhone to bludgeon me to death?”
“What’s bludgeon mean?”
“It means don’t sit next to me in chem.”
✿
Jongin does sit next to Baekhyun, and despite Baekhyun’s exceedingly murderous feelings toward his ‘friend,’ he manages to get through the class without hurting anyone. Maybe it’s because he’s thinking about the two hours, 34 minutes and 27 seconds until the end of the day when he can take the 84 steps up to the 4th floor of the building and see Park Chanyeol again.
Make that two hours, 34 minutes, and 10 seconds.
Two hours and 34 minutes.
Baekhyun really should not be counting.
Two hours, 33 minutes, and 50 seconds.
Oh god, he really should not be this excited.
His calculus class, as well as his English course, pass by in a flash, and before he knows it, he’s taking the stairs two at a time to get up to his usual place of business. Joonmyun is already there when he arrives, texting away on that stupid iPhone.
“You’re earlier than usual,” comments the older boy, not looking up from the device. “And Jongin tells me I’m supposed to ‘bludgeon you to death’ with my baby.” Baekhyun snorts even though he’s out of breath.
"Tell me he looked up the word bludgeon before he told you that?"
"He pronounced it wrong, but I think he knew what he was saying," Joonmyun says, and Baekhyun laughs.
"Fantastic. Maybe if I start using complicated words whenever I talk to him, I can help broaden his vocabulary!" he says, throwing his bag down by his usual chair and plopping down to catch his breath.
"Jongin's vocabulary is just fine," Joonmyun says, "Yours is just a little too broad."
"Whatever," Baekhyun sighs, fanning himself with one hand, "Let me know when he uses one sentence that doesn't make him sound like a caveman."
"He also told me to tell you to stop calling him a caveman," Joonmyun says, frowning. "Besides, he's much too attractive to be a caveman."
"Who's a caveman?" asks a deep voice, and Baekhyun's beginning to think Chanyeol just teleports everywhere he goes because he habitually shows up out of nowhere.
"Kim Jongin," Baekhyun says, ignoring the sudden self-conscious feeling that nags at the back of his mind for being sweaty and out of breath in front of Park Chanyeol.
"He is not," Joonmyun says, frustrated, looking up from his phone. Chanyeol catches on.
"Ah, come to think of it, his skin tone is sorta on the dark side," the tall boy muses, leaning against the doorway to the classroom. "Maybe he's the last of his kind."
"It's hard to understand how he survived, though, considering the miniscule size of his brain," Baekhyun continues, and he and Chanyeol both smirk as Joonmyun glowers at them.
"You two are cruel," he says.
"Sometimes the truth hurts," Chanyeol says, frowning in feigned sadness. "Although, speaking of harsh truths, Joonmyun, man, I've got one for you," he enters the room and walks up to the older boy before finishing in a dramatic whisper, "You can't get married to an iPhone."
The look on Joonmyun's face is priceless.
"I'm going to pretend I don't know either of you and just leave while I'm still sane," Joonmyun says.
"I don't know if you've ever been sane," Baekhyun says, and Joonmyun gives him one last affronted look.
“Fine then, let me rephrase that; I’m going to leave while you two are still alive,” the older boy says, ignoring the laughter from the two of them before hurrying out of the room
About three seconds later, Baekhyun abruptly stops laughing and comes to the startling realization that he is now alone in the classroom with Park Chanyeol.
Suddenly his throat feels dry and his chest feels tight and he wonders if he's going into cardiac rest from running too fast to get up the stairs, but Chanyeol is approaching him and no, that stupid giant is definitely the reason Baekhyun feels like he's dying.
"You're pretty funny, homework guy," Chanyeol says with one of his signature toothy smiles.
"My name's-"
"Byun Baekhyun, I know," Chanyeol interrupts Baekhyun's protest, smiling wider and causing the shorter boy's face to blush scarlet. Maybe having Chanyeol call him 'homework guy' would be more efficient because hearing his name in that sexy deep voice really does not make it easy to think and form coherent thoughts.
... Did Baekhyun really just use 'sexy' to describe Chanyeol's voice? Oh god.
"So here's the assignment," Chanyeol says, handing a notebook and textbook to a very flustered Baekhyun. “I wrote it down in the notebook."
"O-Ok," Baekhyun musters a smile, glad for an excuse to turn his flaming cheeks away from the tall boy.
He's about to start working when he hears the sound of Chanyeol clearing his throat and is forced to turn back around once again.
"Is it OK if I wait here until you're done?" the tall boy asks, eyes shining, and Baekhyun's running through all his comparisons in his head and stopping at the one Jongin had made about Chanyeol being the mutated puppy at a petstore. He's more like the relatively normal, seriously adorable puppy with way too much energy that all of the customers would fight over because everyone wants to take him home. Including Baekhyun.
"I don't mind," he replies in a quiet voice, swallowing hard as Chanyeol beams and happily situates himself in one of the desks adjacent to his own.
"I won't distract you, I promise!" Chanyeol assures him, and Baekhyun doesn't have the heart to tell him that he's really already way too distracting even when he's not doing anything at all.
Maybe Chanyeol is more like an imaginary number, or a one-sided limit, or he could even be that DeMoivre essay Baekhyun wrote two nights ago-
"Is there anywhere in math where you can have an opinion?" Chanyeol asks suddenly. Baekhyun presses his pencil too hard against the paper and the lead snaps, and he's glancing back at Chanyeol to give him a questioning look.
"C-come again?"
"You know," Chanyeol shrugs, "Because in math, answers are always one thing, and you don't really get the chance to say 'I think the answer is this' or I don't know, I guess sometimes answers can vary, but-" Baekhyun is stifling a laugh, blushing when Chanyeol cocks his head to one side like a curious puppy (he really must be one, Baekhyun concludes). "What?" the tall boy asks cutely.
"Nothing, it's just," Baekhyun pauses, fighting a smile, "I don't think I've heard anyone say anything like that. It's an interesting point, and I wish I could say there was some math problem in the world in which you had freedom of opinion." Chanyeol pouts.
"So there isn't?"
"Well, there might be, but I don't know it," Baekhyun says, amused.
"Wow, you really are smart," Chanyeol says, smiling himself while Baekhyun blushes again.
"Wh-why do you say that?" the shorter boy asks, facing the assignment he should be working on. Stupid Park Chanyeol with his stupid distracting face and stupid distracting voice and stupid distracting comments.
"I don't know, like, the way you talk, that sort of thing. You just have a very intelligent feeling about you," Chanyeol explains eagerly. "I like it."
For some reason, Baekhyun almost snaps and says, "I like you," which would be completely ridiculous since he only met Chanyeol yesterday, and this just goes against all of the principles and laws of being Byun Baekhyun and hating the human population as a whole- but it's Park Chanyeol, so maybe Baekhyun doesn't have a choice.
"Thanks," he settles for saying before he returns to working on the math problems. Although, his face stays a rather warm shade of red.
He only manages to get through half of the assignment because Chanyeol keeps talking to him. He doesn't mind. Chanyeol still insists on paying him the $5.
part 2